Cinema
The Seventh Seal
Det sjunde inseglet
Ingmar Bergman · 1957
Synopsis
In the middle of the fourteenth century, the knight Antonius Block and his squire Jöns return from ten years of crusade to a Sweden ravaged by plague. On a beach, Death comes for the knight; he challenges it to a game of chess, and it agrees to let him live as long as he resists it. On the way, they meet travelling players, Jof, who has visions, his wife Mia and their little boy, flagellants, and a young woman accused of witchcraft who is to be burned the next day. The knight, for his part, seeks an answer to the silence of God.
Context
The film is drawn from a play by the same author, Trämålning, performed on the radio in 1954 and in Malmö in 1955. The studio had at first refused the screenplay; it was the success of Sommarnattens leende at Cannes, in 1956, that decided the producer Carl Anders Dymling, with a minimal budget and thirty-six days of shooting. The game of chess against Death comes from a painting by Albertus Pictor in the church of Täby. The final dance of death was improvised in a few minutes at Hovs hallar, on a stormy evening: several actors having left, stagehands and tourists danced in their place.
Who it is for
Ninety-six minutes, in Swedish and a little Latin. An allegory, which can nevertheless be followed like a travel narrative.
Prizes and reception
Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1957, it entered the Swedish cultural canon in 2025.
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